MI AMI: 20JFG GUEST PODCAST

  Mi Ami‘s deliriously lo-fi mix for us got lost briefly in the flooded series of tubes that connect 20JFG to the outside world. Thankfully its battered form has been secured from the depths of Sendspace.
This is like being stuck in the middle of sensory deprivation bubble in the throbbing heart of Detroit Techno circa ’89. As you near the sides the waves of distorted bass overwhelm you. You retreat attempting to find the event horizon for the vertiginous noise, sometimes straying into silence occasionally tuning to an alternate plane altogether and forever falling into bass.
  If Ableton was used for this, its emotionally damaged shell will be walking the corridors of anonymous nightclubs approaching strangers and blithely offering them quantisation services. This isn’t perfectly bland mixing – it’s welding. Tracks crashed together, fused with audio fed straight from  
  YouTube – I’m pretty sure you can hear the volume being turned up on a Mac towards the start. EQs dial in and out, not to accentuate the drop or build tension but with unfathomable almost organic logic. Like a restless animal, hi-frequencies are isolated, tossed around, dropped and fed back into the mix before the whole thing jumps through a portal to another mix entirely, glimpsing its own future (or past it’s hard to tell) before slamming back into the original timeline. For a moment. Then silence. In a mix.
 This is glorious.This could also have been a complete mess if the selections hadn’t supported this approach but thankfully each track seems part of a narcotic fever dream we drift in and out of, flicking channels within some schizophrenic PKD opera. Which I guess is like most music we love: the selection of the component parts support the unconventional ideas at their core. Well, most of the time.

Mi Ami – Deep In The Cut (4am Mix) with Diva Dompe and M. Geddes Gengras

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(Via- 20JFG Blog)

SEX WORKER - "Waving Goodbye" LP (NNF)

  Those of you who actually read this shifty blog, might remember our write up on Sex Worker's pulsating wash out of a debut full length, called "Labor of Love", a few months back.A record that totally blew us, and many others away time and time again.Daniel Martin-McCormick is Sex Worker.He was a core member of the painfully overlooked and oddly, mega-influential D.C. band - Black Eyes.If you don't already own them, go buy all of their releases.Seminal shit, indeed.He spends most of his time singing and playing guitar in Mi Ami these days, who are also quite good, and not too far from Sex Worker's space-dub collage.
 With Labor of Love, McCormick did some heavily blatant flirting with classic psychedelic, dub, and drone music.The three songs that make up that record were blown out, drawn out, and pretty damn freaked out, too.Relying on more subtle, and extremely minimal analog tones, and stretched out low-end looping to carry his squeaky, affected wails and croons along for the  slow ride.A total anthem-ridden punk/dub record lies beneath the rubble of echoes and dense,noisy fog.Pick it up NOW.

  He returns now, with a new lp entitled "Waving Goodbye", which ironically was released the same day that
he set out on a trip leaving San Fransisco Bay to live in Brooklyn,NY.A literal wave goodbye.California will surely miss this dude, but he left them with quite the parting gift.Six brand new songs of damaged, haunting, and hair-raising, neon-street-dance gems.This record is such a wild turn from the last, and it just gets better each time i hear it.Things unfold a little more with each listen, kind of like how a Fellini film works you over several times, but this one is more Brazil/Over The Edge.His pulsating echoes and creepo synth dissonance haven't completely been replaced, but coupled with a more direct vocal passage and a painfully tuneful agony, that fills in the open spaces.The NNF site tags these six new songs as "street grime crooner ballads and sprawling forlorn trancefloor fantasias", and I can't think of a more accurate and bizarre definition.
Shards of dubbed out beat worship splinter through some rather piercing synth work out and bass rumbles.McCormick's voice still cracks like a whip, and slices through the deep rhythms so easily, but there is a sense of control and a more collected spirit within his shrieks.Tales of life and love and loss and things to come drip from his tongue, and he keeps it brutally honest, as always.Definitely more "songwriting techniques" are being used here than on his last record, but the content is all just as dark and anthem-filled, if not ten times more.
 Everyone will pull something different from this album, but all will find something fresh and inventive to listen to, even if you hate it.For fans of new and revamped genres, and peat listening.Quite an achievement.Keep your mind's eye out for a new split 7" with Psychic Reality, as part of NNF's Bored Fortress club.It rules.

SEX WORKER - "Labor of Love" LP/CD (NotNotFun)

   




   Sex Worker is Daniel Martin-McCormick.He is also the current front man,guitarist and main visionary behind San Fransisco's dub/percussion attack- Mi Ami,and ex-guitar treatment/vocalist for seminal D.C. band Black Eyes.With his first full-length for this vehicle,McCormick strays from his conventional guitar scratch and rhythmic howls of his other projects,for a more ambient,drone-based art form.His voice is the main element here,soaked in reverb and tape delays to carry his squeaks and squeals as they dance on your brain.The record begins with a tuneful glitch that sounds like some kind of looped synth or midi sample,but it's not long before his unmistakable voice soars high above anything resembling a melody.Things often tend to get violent on this album,when the many layers of vocal chants and possible radar blips collide with low bass rumbles,treated drums machines,synthesizer sines and guitar wobble.This had been described as "future dub",and that description is not too far off base.These are protest songs with ghostly agendas.Lefty anthems with well hidden choruses.The vibes speak for themselves.Sex Worker provides a door to McCormick's mind,a window to his soul,and perhaps a reflective pool to show us how we all connected through music.This is Trance for forward thinkers and punks alike.Finally!This is Labor of Love.

MI AMI - STEAL YOUR FACE -12" (Thrill Jockey)

Mi Ami - Steal Your Face 12"

I always thought Mi Ami knew exactly what they were doing from their very inception.As a huge Black Eyes fan,I was stoked-yet-skeptical on them from the start.That "Some Boys" single still runs through my mind on occasion.That has all changed since the "Watersports" album.My mind is made up with this one..Mi Ami is a different kind of threat altogether.A pleasurable one to say the least.And on Steal Your Face,they have finally grown into themselves.This is confident and dangerous music,there is no telling where it's headed and i like it that way.

Abrasive and blown out from the first note,these six songs show the band going for a more raw and untreated punk approach.Or so it seems at first.There's plenty of Daniel's signature squeaky howls and drugged-out chants in the mix,and his scratchy,fuzzed out riffs are churned out at you non-stop,and quickly morphed into delay-soaked pulses that float atop the rhythms to no end.There are some nice and lazy dubbed-out moments here,with some gentle percussion to drift away on,but for the most part the drums remain solid,pummeling,and right where they need to be at all times.Thick bass lines are the glue to hold this all together,they are worked in nicely and crawl right beneath the awesome treble attack of the rhythm section.Another solid release from start to finish.Brilliant.